Welcome to the Department for Constitutional Affairs website. We hope that you will find our site easy to use.
This page is to help you find your way around the site if you do have difficulties.
On the left side of the home page (and this page) you will find a number of headings. These are the main category headings used in the site and are outlined below. If you select any of these headings, you'll find sub-headings of the topics that are covered under these categories.
Each main category heading has unique sub-navigation items, but otherwise the navigation remains the same on all pages. On every page there is direct access to the home page, search, survey, contact, help, site map and copyright & disclaimer.
If the information you want is something that's just been announced or published check the 'what's new' section on the right hand side of either the home page, or under any of the main category headings. These sections provide links to the latest news from the Department for Constitutional Affairs.
If it's not apparent which of our headings your area of interest will be in, you can use the sitemap, or the website's own search engine to help guide you to the most likely pages for the subject you're looking for.
If you get stuck, there is a 'home' link in the top left corner of every page which will return you to the Department for Constitutional Affairs home page, or you can use the 'back' button in your browser to return to the previous page.
This website uses the following main category headings, all of which are available from the home page:
The Department - what the DCA does, our Ministers and other general information;
Publications - consultation papers, reports, speeches, press notices, statistics, research, Parliamentary Bills etc;
Legal System - about the courts, tribunals, legal profession and the Criminal Justice system;
Getting Legal Help - links to help you get legal advice on problems;
People's Rights - information on human rights, freedom of information, data protection, elections and transsexual people's rights;
Legal Policy - details on legal aid, various aspects of civil and criminal law, and family law;
Constitution - House of Lords' reform, Government's formal links with Royalty, Crown dependencies, devolution and Remembrance Sunday;
Appointments - to the judiciary, magistracy and other public offices. Also covers job opportunities in the Department for Constitutional Affairs itself;
Judges - general information about judges, such as their pay, how they're appointed/trained, and judicial statistics;
Magistrates - general information about lay magistrates, and also about the work of Magistrates' Courts - who deal with 95% of criminal cases in England and Wales;
Useful Links - helpful websites for organisations whose work is of relevance to the Department for Constitutional Affairs and our customers, or who cover legal issues at home or abroad. This includes links to other Government Departments and bodies, plus professional and pressure groups.
Access keys have been implemented on this site to improve keyboard access to content. The UK Government access key standard has been adopted and provides alternative navigation to core areas of the site.
The site has been designed to meet a wide range of accessibility requirements and we are keen to hear from you if you have any specific access needs. Indeed, if you have any comments or suggestions to help us make our website more informative or easier to use we would be pleased to hear from you. Please email any queries or comments or complete our online questionnaire.
Many documents are provided in Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have a Portable Document Format reader installed on your computer, you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website.
Viewers with visual difficulties may find it useful to investigate services provided to improve the accessibility of Acrobat documents: http://access.adobe.com.
Please note that these files might not be fully accessible for screen-reader software or other needs. If you need a fully accessible version, please email us.
You will need a news reader. There are many different versions, some can be accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. All allow you to display and subscribe to the RSS feeds you want.
If you click on the button on our homepage marked XML /RSS you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the RSS feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader.
Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari, have functionality which automatically picks up RSS feeds for you. For more details on these, please check their websites.
The Department for Constitutional Affairs does not accept any liability for its RSS feed.